Lucy Spraggan poses for a portrait after performing, meeting fans and signing copies of her album 'Join The Club'. Photo / Getty Images
Lucy Spraggan poses for a portrait after performing, meeting fans and signing copies of her album 'Join The Club'. Photo / Getty Images
An X Factor contestant has revealed how she was raped by a hotel porter while competing on the ITV talent show.
Lucy Spraggan, a 31-year-old singer, suddenly dropped out of the show in 2012 citing illness, despite her popularity with both the public and the judges.
Now, 11 years later, the musician has revealed how she had been out at a Mayfair nightclub to celebrate a fellow contestant’s birthday with members of the show’s production team before she was attacked at her hotel.
In an interview with the Guardian to promote her memoir Process: Finding My Way Through, she said was aged just 20 when she fell unconscious and was escorted back to the hotel by a member of the production team, where a porter offered to help get her to her room.
However, the porter returned using a “traceable keycard” and attacked her.
“I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that level of confusion since,” she said.
“I knew that I’d been raped, but I could not process that. So I put my clothes on and went into autopilot.”
Lucy Spraggan performs on stage during the night of her tour. Photo / Getty Images
Although the production team called the police and an arrest was made, Spraggan said she believed the crew were “unprepared” to deal with the horror of what had happened.
Spraggan left The X Factor, which was won that year by James Arthur, citing illness. However, she has now revealed a side effect of a drug used to prevent HIV made her too unwell to continue in the days after the assault.
She said she had wanted to make public the reason for her exit but was told it might affect her future career, and she was speaking out now “in order for me to rebuild myself and move on – I needed to tell the truth”.
The singer went on to have two top 10 albums in the UK charts, with Join The Club reaching number seven in 2013 and Choices peaking at number five in 2021.
She received both financial and medical support in the immediate aftermath, but said she has not been given any support after her attacker was convicted.
‘I was on my own’
Writing in her memoir, she said: “No one ever contacted me to ask if I was okay.”
“No one called or emailed when the trial was over and he was convicted. No one offered me rehabilitation or ongoing mental health treatment. I was on my own.”
She told the Guardian: “It was inappropriate for anybody – including contestants – to be drunk. How can you fulfil your duty of care when free alcohol is involved?”
Spraggan was 20 when she was a contestant on the hit UK reality show in 2012. Photo / Instagram
In a statement, ITV said it had the “deepest compassion for Lucy and everything she has endured”, adding how The X Factor was produced by Thames and Syco, which were primarily responsible for duty of care towards all of their programme contributors.
It added: “ITV as a commissioning broadcaster is committed to having in place suitable and robust oversight procedures, with a view to ensuring that independent producers employ the correct processes to protect the mental health and welfare of participants.”
“We have evolved and improved these oversight procedures since the events in question and we are encouraged to hear that Thames recognises the importance of continuous review and improvement of their own processes.”
A spokesman for Fremantle, the British TV company that produced The X Factor for ITV under its Thames TV entertainment arm, said it was “extremely sorry” for what Spraggan had endured, adding: “Whilst we believed throughout that we were doing our best to support Lucy in the aftermath of the ordeal, as Lucy thinks we could have done more, we must therefore recognise this.”
“We have done our very best to learn lessons from these events and improve our aftercare processes.”
X Factor creator Simon Cowell, who was not a judge for the 2012 UK series, described the singer’s ordeal as “horrific and heartbreaking”.
